This article reflects on the evaluation of an innovative educational arts project at a primary school in Liverpool. Based on an animated film version of Janácek's "Cunning Little Vixen," an opera populated by animals, this child-led project was considered to be a successful endeavour. Yet there remain unanswered questions over how this…

The following article explores how one researcher blended verbal and visual literacies to disrupt conceptualizations of traditional qualitative research. Engaging visual modalities as a research tool, the author invites readers into an a/r/tographical multimodal post qualitative journey that deeply explores the power and value of visual research.…

Our pedagogic developing project, ImproStory, addresses improvisation and storytelling. We study how these two concepts could be applied in arts and crafts education for both primary and Kindergarten (daycare) teachers. The majority of our data consists of digital questionnaires in basic arts and crafts studies of primary pre-service teachers (N =…

This case study reports on an arts-based project called "Tree-Mappa," one that sought to engage primary-school children in learning about their local environment through significant trees. Pedagogical approaches featured the use of arts-based strategies as the means for activating cognitive and affective responses and learning. The frame…

Pre-service drama teachers enter teacher training with established ideas and beliefs about teaching. These beliefs, based on experience, are informed by many hours spent in schools, and the pedagogies--both effective and ineffective--utilised by their teachers. This research explores the influence of some of these prior experiences on pre-service…

"Strange Fruit," a song popularized by Billie Holiday in 1939, paints a gruesome picture of racial violence suffered by former African-American slaves following Reconstruction, 1863-1877 (Foner, 2011). While many scholars have analyzed the lyrics of "Strange Fruit", research that focuses on young people's reaction to the song…

This research incorporates various projects to address issues of diversity in a rural Korean community with bicultural children. The interdisciplinary activities in the projects seek to help students better understand their interracial peers, accept diversity, and not engage in bullying and teasing behaviors. In addition, the social psychology…

This qualitative study presents an analysis of how the use of social media can provide opportunities for students to critically analyze complex texts and collaborate with peers. The students participated as active audience members at a theatrical performance of Gertrude Stein's "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights" at a large urban…

Globally, teachers are trained to educate and assess children through matrices based on comparative competition, a practice that thrives on ranking. In an era of glocalization, how might educational systems cultivate classroom connections embracing diverse student gifts? This arts-based narrative inquiry explores fatherly life lessons of 17…

This article reviews and analyses educational policies and curricula for general education in Australian and Spanish systems, in relation to their concerns for arts education to contribute to values education and the acquisition of peaceful, social and civic competences in schools. The use of the arts to shape individual and community identities,…

This qualitative study employed grounded theory to explore how a university-based summer practicum experience with community children (N = 55) revealed and shaped pre-service teachers' (N = 24) understanding of young children and their musical skills and dispositions; how early childhood music curriculum is designed; and supports and barriers to…

This article presents the story of one elementary school teacher's shift in art praxis through her involvement in a research project aimed at facilitating participatory arts-based communities of practice. Qualitative methods and social constructivism informed Professional Learning Interventions (PLIs) involving: (1) a visual arts workshop, (2)…

The aim of this case study was to discover how three Sami artists present their culture in their arts and how their art grows from Sami traditions. Our first purpose was to find out how they use their art forms' roots to create new ideas. The other purpose of this study was to bring into discussion the importance of a minority culture's arts in…

The arts have long been known as a central medium for nurturing artistic expression and aesthetic responses. Notions of arts-based teaching are combined with concepts of literacy and composition, focusing on the fact that these separate fields have the potential for relational meaning making. In this article, three arts-based, qualitative research…

By exploring changemaker principles as a component of social justice art education this research-informed article exemplifies how moral consciousness and responsibility can be developed when training artist teachers. It embeds changemaker philosophy in the higher education art curriculum and demonstrates how this can create ruptures and ripples…